Low-cost ways to tap into my expertise
I love working one-on-one with clients (and I also love supervising a team of organizers to help clients) and we get great results. But sometimes budgetary or geographic constraints make that impossible.
That’s why I’m glad to bring up some opportunities for ways you can tap into my expertise even if you’re on a budget and/or you don’t live in St. Louis.
You can hear me speak
Mom’s Blast Off I’ll be participating in the Mom’s Blast Off workshop on February 24, where I’m joining life coach Jill Farmer and social-media expert Allison Collinger in a three-hour event designed to help you launch your best year ever. All this for $49.
Letting Go of the Tough Stuff I’ll be teaching a 90-minute class at the Thomas Dunn Memorials in south St. Louis on February 28 on how to let go of sentimental and other objects that might be cluttering up your life. The cost for the class is only $10.
You can take my online workshop
Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines I’m absolutely delighted to be teaching this online workshop once again for simplify 101. The three-lesson, four-week workshop will help you create beneficial habits and routines and let go of bad habits. The special sauce of these workshops is the online forum, where your can interact with the instructor (me!), along with your to get accountability and support, which is so important with habit creation. The cost is only $59 and if you register today it’s an even better deal at $47.20. (The early-bird registration ends today.)
You can purchase one of my Organizing Guides
Organizing Guides I wrote these concise pdfs after hearing the same sorts of questions from my clients over and over. I wanted to give them something in writing to answer their questions. When you hire me to work with you, you get certain guides free of charge. But you can also download them on their own for $9 each. Right now, through the end of February, I’m offering a buy one, get one free special. Use the coupon code GUIDEME to get an instant $9 off when you buy two or more guides.
You can take one of my e-courses
Make Peace with Your Mail Most of my clients have difficulty dealing with the onslaught of mail that comes into their lives. I created an e-course that uses printed and video lessons to help you learn how to get (and stay) on top of your mail. The price is $59 but I’ll let you in on a little secret: the GUIDEME code will also get you $9 off the e-course if you purchase it separately.
Declutter Happy Hour I created this e-course with life coach Shannon Wilkinson as a way to help folks get past the emotional barriers to decluttering and actually get the job done. Shannon helps you with the emotional stuff and I help you tackle the physical side of decluttering. The course is presented as a series of audio lessons, along with daily emails for 28 days to inspire and motivate you to keep up the good work. The price? $97 for the core course/$127 for the premium course.
Terrific new donation resource
My friend and colleague, Sue Anderson of Simplified Living Solutions, a fellow professional organizer here in St. Louis, has created a really terrific resource for folks wanting donate unwanted items.
The Stuff Stop is a website that lists worthy charities who are seeking donated items and what they’re after. Sue’s who has a passion for connecting people’s unwanted stuff with people who need stuff and creating this site is a dream come true for her. The site debuted just last week, but it’s already chock full of great resources and it promises to get even better as more item-needing charities are added.
Post are tagged by item category as well as location, so you can click on “Missouri” for example, and see all the Missouri-based charities. Or you can click on “Glass Bottles” and see that there are two charities listed that are interested in glass bottle donations. (Who knew?)
If you’re looking to declutter and would like to donate some of your unwanted belongings, this is a great place to find folks who would really like your stuff.
Bravo to Sue for following her dream and creating this great resource!
Postal increase
I just happened across an article online today telling me that, as of yesterday, the U.S. postal service has raised the price of a first-class stamp by a penny to 45 cents. I’m surprised, because in the past I’ve known about that sort of thing in advance. This one was just under the radar for me.
So I wanted to share it here, in case it had escaped your notice as well.
Here’s a summary of what’s going on:
- The price of a first-class stamp went up by a penny to 45 cents
- The price of a postcard stamp went up by 3 cents to 32 cents
- One-ounce letters to Canada and Mexico went up by 5 cents to 85 cents
- Letters to other foreign countries went up by 7 cents to $1.05.
- For first-class postage, the price of additional ounces remains the same at 20 cents per ounce.
- Forever stamps purchased at lower prices before yesterday’s rate hike remain valid
I still think that 45 cents to mail a letter door to door is an amazing deal. It’s been 2.5 years since there was a rate hike. I worry about whether the postal service will be able to remain afloat in the midst of all the electronic options and I certainly don’t begrudge them a rate increase.
Personally, I think the postal service should sell ads on stamp booklets or the backs of stamps to raise revenue. There are ads everywhere else, why not on stamps?
Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines workshop now open
Last fall I developed and taught a fun online workshop for Simplify 101 called Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines. I’m delighted that it’s being offered again, February 21 through March 20. You can sign up now and get early-bird pricing (20 percent off!) through January 27.
My friend and colleague, Aby Garvey, owns Simplify 101 with her husband, Jay. They put on a variety of online organizing workshops. (I’m honored to be their first guest instructor.) Believe me, they run a top-notch operation. What makes Simplify 101 workshops special is that on top of excellent information, students can interact in online forums.
When you sign up for this workshop, you’ll get three lessons, released a week apart. Each lesson is available to be read on the website, or as a pdf, or as an mp3. Your choice. And you also get access to the glorious forums where you’ll not only have the chance to ask me questions but also gain encouragement and wisdom from your classmates. It’s a very special arrangement, if you ask me.
In Simplify Your Life with Habits + Routines I’ll be helping students identify good habits they already have, ones they’d like to create, and figure out how to link habits together to form simple routines. I’ll also be helping students let go of habits that are less desirable.
If you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know that I’m all about habits and routines as a way of making life run more smoothly. If you’re intrigued about how to harness the power of great habits and routines, I urge you to sign up for this online workshop!
Here's your chance to Explore & Play More!
My friend and Declutter Happy Hour partner, Shannon Wilkinson of Perception Studios is a fantastic life coach. This I know from personal experience over the last six or so years. I’ve been lucky enough to do one-on-one work with her and know what amazing internal transformations she can help make.
Working with Shannon one on one isn’t cheap (though it’s well worth the money), which is why I’m delighted there are other, lower-cost ways to benefit from her crazy-good skills. Here’s the latest offering:
Explore and Play More. Shannon offers a free coaching call every month, called Explore and Play. She records them and sells the recordings for $18. With Explore and Play More membership, you pay $13 a month and get the recording, plus a special members-only lounge on Facebook in which to hang out and continue the conversation with Shannon and fellow members, and added information from Shannon.
And here’s something extremely cool. The first 15 people who join Explore and Play More receive access to all seven of the past Explore and Play group coaching call recordings for sale for $18 each. (That’s a $126 value.)
The past themes explored during the monthly Explore and Play calls were:
- Inspire yourself
- Stress less
- Power of perspective
- Create confidence
- Quiet the chatter
- Moving through inertia
- Overcoming overwhelm
In these calls, Shannon takes a volunteer through hypnosis and neurolinguistic programming exercises surrounding the theme. When you participate in the call live, or listen to the recording, you can go through the same exercises yourself. It’s a wonderful, gentle and affordable way to get help and make breakthroughs!
To recap, for $13 a month you get:
- Invitation to the monthly Explore and Play group coaching calls (and you can step up and volunteer to be coached in the call…that’s like free one-on-one coaching!)
- A recording of each call starting the month you join
- Exclusive access to Shannon’s brilliance (and that of fellow members) on the Explore & Play More Facebook lounge
- Added info from Shannon, expanding on the topics that come up in that month’s theme
And the first 15 folks to join get access to all the past recordings as well.
I’m a member. It’s an amazing deal and I’m thrilled to recommend it!
Today's time saver: using email to send a text message
I’m not a big text messaging person. I don’t have kids, so I haven’t been forced to text. I finally bought a smart phone last year (a cheapish Android, the LG Optimus T) and I find texting annoying at best. But certain people (like my husband) like to receive communications via text message.
When I’m at home and he’s out in the world, texting him makes sense. But I’d much rather type a message on my full-size computer keyboard in seconds than take a full minute to agonizingly touch the keys on my little phone.
I’ve learned that I can indeed type my text messages on my computer and send them via email. And you can too.
By simply typing the phone number with appropriate domain after the sign, you can send an email text. For example, to text my husband, I just type 3141234567tmomail.net, since he uses T-Mobile. (That’s not his real number, believe it or not.) If you know the cell phone provider of the person you want to text, all you need to know is the appropriate domain for that cell phone company.
I searched around the internet and found these email addresses for several major cell phone providers:
Sprint: cellnumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: cellnumber@vtext.com
T-Mobile: cellnumber@tmomail.net
AT&T: cellnumber@txt.att.net
Virgin Mobile: cellnumber@vmobl.com
US Cellular: cellnumber@email.uscc.net
I can’t verify the validity of these email addresses, except for T-Mobile & AT&T. If you try them and they do or don’t work, I’d love it if you’d make a comment here.
Incidentally, when I email a text to my husband, he responds on his phone by texting a reply and I receive it as an email.
Guest posts galore!
This is a big week for me for guest posts!
I took part in a blog post for the terrific mathophilic blog, Math for Grown Ups on how I use math in my work. The blog’s owner, Laura Laing, has a Monday series where she interviews various folks about how they use math in their professions.
Incidentally, Math for Grownups is all about organizing this week. Check out this great post Laura wrote today on Getting organized bit by bit. It explains mathematically how much you can get done in 15 minutes of regular effort. I love it!
I also wrote a blog post for Suddenly Frugal the popular money-saving blog written by my friend Leah Ingram. (I did a Q&A with Leah on this blog back in February, when her book, Keep, Toss, Sell: The Suddenly Frugal Guide to Cleaning Out the Clutter and Cashing In was published.) My post on Suddenly Frugal today is on 5 tips to get organized on a budget.
I appreciate the regular readers of my blog so much, but it’s fun to get exposed to some new folks. If you’ve hopped over here from either of those blogs, I do hope you find it interesting and come back often!
